2023 Bremen state election

How do political campaigns target voters?

Methodology

In collaboration with Who Targets Me, we monitored over 36 political advertisers in Bremen during the 2023 Bremen state election to better understand how campaigns use different targeting methods made available by Meta. To do this, we used data from the Meta Ad Library, using the new ‘Audience’ data which gives some detail on how pages target their ads.

To better understand the election, we kept only advertisers who:

  1. Advertised in the last 7 days (May 7th - May 13th 2023)
  2. Advertised in the last 30 days (Apr 14th - May 13th 2023)

Note: Meta only provides 7, 30 and 90 days windows for the targeting data in their Ad Library. Meta’s data also lags by a few days. We will update this report as soon as new data is available.

Topline Statistics

Apr 14th - May 13th 2023 (Last 30 days)

In total, political parties spend €50,772 and ran 1157 ad copies on Meta in this timeframe.

Number of Advertisers Top Spenders Number of Ads Total Spend

FDP

5


1. FDP Bremen (€5,830)
2. Tobias Huch (€1,542)
3. FDP Bremerhaven (€688)

734

€8,392

DIE LINKE

1


1. DIE LINKE Land Bremen (€6,872)

22

€6,872

CDU

8


1. CDU Bremen (€3,018)
2. CDU Schwachhausen - Bremen (€1,895)
3. Jörg Müller-Arnecke (€722)

69

€6,777

DIE GRUENEN

2


1. Grüne Bremen (€6,366)
2. GRÜNE JUGEND Bremen (€358)

19

€6,724

Volt

1


1. Volt Bremen (€6,623)

87

€6,623

BIW

2


1. BÜRGER IN WUT Bremen/Bremerhaven (€3,167)
2. Piet Leidreiter (€2,738)

53

€5,905

SPD

13


1. SPD Land Bremen (€3,416)
2. SPD Bremen-Stadt (€500)
3. Jusos Bremen (€400)

119

€5,802

dieBasis

1


1. IIIIdieBasis (€2,894)

50

€2,894

Tierschutzpartei

1


1. LV Bremen - Tierschutzpartei (€783)

4

€783

May 7th - May 13th 2023 (Last 7 days)

In total, political parties spend €25,433 and ran 622 ad copies on Meta in this timeframe.

Number of Advertisers Top Spenders Number of Ads Total Spend

DIE GRUENEN

2


1. Grüne Bremen (€3,649)
2. GRÜNE JUGEND Bremen (€143)

11

€3,792

DIE LINKE

1


1. DIE LINKE Land Bremen (€3,573)

20

€3,573

BIW

2


1. Piet Leidreiter (€1,754)
2. BÜRGER IN WUT Bremen/Bremerhaven (€1,477)

23

€3,231

Volt

1


1. Volt Bremen (€3,160)

40

€3,160

FDP

4


1. FDP Bremen (€2,383)
2. FDP Bremerhaven (€321)
3. Tobias Huch (€177)

369

€2,981

SPD

13


1. SPD Land Bremen (€1,516)
2. Recai Aytas (€229)
3. SPD Bremen-Stadt (€200)

66

€2,965

CDU

6


1. CDU Bremen (€1,330)
2. CDU Schwachhausen - Bremen (€707)
3. Jörg Müller-Arnecke (€314)

41

€2,691

dieBasis

1


1. IIIIdieBasis (€2,652)

49

€2,652

Tierschutzpartei

1


1. LV Bremen - Tierschutzpartei (€388)

3

€388

Spending per Targeting Criteria

How much did campaigns spend on different targeting methods?

Apr 14th - May 13th 2023 (Last 30 days)

Overall

By Party

May 7th - May 13th 2023 (Last 7 days)

Overall

By Party

Top Targeted (Detailed) Audiences

Here, we show the top targeted audiences for each party for the “detailed” targeting that Meta offers (ranked by amount of Euro spend). Most (but not all) of these audiences are “interest” audiences, i.e. the parties targeted people interested in “Books” or “Politics”.

Apr 14th - May 13th 2023 (Last 30 days)

May 7th - May 13th 2023 (Last 7 days)

Top Contested Audiences

Here, we show the top most contested audiences, i.e. where all parties have spent considerable amounts of money competing to reach voters with the same interests. Most (but not all) of these audiences are “interest” audiences, i.e. the parties targeted people interested in “Books” or “Politics”. In each row on the right hand side, you can see how much in total was spend on that specific target audience.

Apr 14th - May 13th 2023 (Last 30 days)

May 7th - May 13th 2023 (Last 7 days)

Age Targeting

Apr 14th - May 13th 2023 (Last 30 days)

May 7th - May 13th 2023 (Last 7 days)

Gender Targeting

Apr 14th - May 13th 2023 (Last 30 days)

May 7th - May 13th 2023 (Last 7 days)

Job Targeting

Apr 14th - May 13th 2023 (Last 30 days)